we've got stories we'll never tell
by quorra laraex
Summary: Beauty kills, and so do cigarettes. — Shikamaru/Ino


**_a/n: **drabble. high school!au. enjoy.

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**we've got stories (we'll never tell)**

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/

Prom queen winning, head cheerleading, platinum blonde, Barbie-doll looking girls with killer smiles and brilliant ocean eyes always had something to hide. Of course, they'd never expose their secrets to anybody, especially Ino – because that would _kill_ her, kill that perfect façade she worked so (_so_) hard to grasp and maintain all her life.

And oh, _right_. It could probably actually kill her in the long run.

And so when she stocks into the girls' restroom furthest away from her calculus class (just for precautious reasons) and notices two dangling feet in one of the seven stalls, she pretends to be materialistic and vain; she checks herself out in the mirror and pins nonexistent, loose hair back into her high pony tail (she must have done this over five times today) before she exits.

The thought of trailing to every ladies' room in her entire school crosses her mind, but she quickly brushes it off because her lavatory pass only allows her to be out of class for ten minutes, maximum. Ino deals with this on the daily. However, when she creeps toward the door of the men's restroom, she's hesitant because she's never actually had to go out of her way to go into none other than her strictly gender-labeled bathroom. Knowing she won't be long (and knowing that if someone were to spot her coming out of the boys' room, they'd only think that she'd have been hooking up with somebody – some guy on the football team, or along those lines) she packs up her courage and quickly, yet quietly opens the door. She warily eyes for perched feet behind stall doors or in front of urinals.

Seeing none, she practically runs into the closest door, her heels shuffling along the cold floor, and squats in front of the toilet. She doesn't kneel, not anymore. She couldn't keep bringing lotion every time she'd excuse herself out of class to moisturize the effect the floor would have left on her knees after balancing on them for the time she needed. And she was _Ino Yamanaka_. It could be raining and she would still be seen wearing a flimsy skirt. Maybe clad in some stockings underneath, but that was unlikely.

Finger in her mouth and the point of her nose facing the bright lights of the ceiling, her lunch makes its way back up. She times when she should dive her chin down, and before she knows it, there's her meal in the bowl in discolored chunks and Ino's more than used to the tears that had sprung in the corners of her eyes as well as the burning twinge in her throat, and the acidic taste in her mouth.

When she's sure everything she's consumed the past half an hour is out of her system, she's quick to flush the toilet using the sole of her ankle boot. If it had been half a year ago, she probably would have spent the remainder of her class sitting on the disgusting floor of the stall bathroom, foolishly crying over her problems. But she's half a year older, and half a year wiser, and she knows drowning in self pity will not make her any more beautiful.

The job is simple now. She's gotten the hang of it, at least. And it's been okay, she tells herself.

(as long as nobody knows, and that most definitely includes her best friend, Sakura)

The clicking of her heels are slow when she makes her way to the sink to bathe her hands and gargle. It's only after she pushes a stick of minty gum into her mouth when the nicotine invades her senses to her far left and she meets the eyes of a boy smoking what's left of his Marlboro box. If she hadn't known him since third grade, his dark gaze would probably have her shivering.

Tongue-tied and really fucking nervous about having someone witness the absolute, horrendous, disgusting, _imperfect_ side to her, Ino chews on the inside of her lip before stumbling with words. "How long have you been here?"

The boy's gaze doesn't falter when he fishes out the cigarette from his lips to blow out a wisp of sharp smoke. "Since before you came sprinting in."

She kind of just stands there, awkwardly – compared to him, at least, since he's rested right up against the frame of the mirror, which she's standing right in front of. She has nothing to say, and she's really fucking pissed because she _really_ fucked up here.

It's not as if Shikamaru was a threat or anything. He's the quiet type, she knows. Has been, for the last – _what_, ten years? It's just embarrassing, to say in the least. He's not going to ruin her rep, though he has found the golden ticket.

Ino wonders why she even cares about what he thinks of her now.

"It's just kind of sad," he states, and he's aware he's filling up the bathroom with this ashy scent.

She thinks that he better not be talking about her life, because she's worked really fucking hard to get where she's at. Her grades are high, her social life incredible – the only problem she's ever really had was just—

"You're killing yourself, dollface."

—her self esteem.

(and she was fixing it)

"And what do you think you're doing?" the blonde retaliates, a hand on her hip and another pointing at the joint between his fingers. She glares daggers, and she could easily judge him based on what she's gathered of him – those multiple piercings, the pony tail, the _skipping class to light a smoke_ – but she's not that type of person, despite the fact many perceive her as such. Truthfully, she'd always been irked when people would smoke. Especially since her mother had died of lung cancer years back. She knows he knows. It'd been the talk of the school during their sophomore year.

And Shikamaru's killer smart, she acknowledges. He was probably smarter than anyone in their entire grade, so she couldn't understand why he'd been making these kinds of decisions. There must've been a reason. And it's not as if she was the type to have faith in just anybody, but she really believed he could fight an addiction. She doesn't realize how much she's underestimating herself until she hears his proposal.

"Look, let's save us some future trouble," he starts, and he finishes his smoke and crushes it before flicking the empty box into the trash can. "If I stop, then you stop."

And she thinks it might be worth a shot.

/

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**fin.**

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**_a/n:** i wanted to write a high school setting one shot, but i didn't want to just have ino as that perfect, stuck-up (bitch). she needed the one flaw, that would really put some dimension into this au character, so yeah.

what'd you think?


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